Ah, the open road. Americans love to say that phrase: “Ah, the open road.” Americans love the idea of the open road; we love Jack Kerouac, we love Route 66, and we love it when a character in a movie jumps up and shouts, “Road trip!” When we say, “Ah, the open road,” we picture a very good-looking version of ourselves behind the wheel of a red 1966 GTO convertible, kitted out with bitchin’ shades and listening to “Bad To The Bone.” I cherished a remarkably similar image of myself when I decided to take my road trip last spring, and although my bitchin’ shades made me look kind of like an X File, I had a George Thorogood tape, and I had gas money. I had also chosen to put out of my mind the myriad occasions on which the open road had tattered my nerves.

I love the scene in Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion when Romy and Michele set out for Tucson, and they get into the Jaguar convertible and turn on the theme song from Footloose, and Michele says, “Woooo!” but then the car stalls, so Romy restarts it and the music comes back on, and Michele says, “Woooo!” again, but the car stalls, again, and Romy restarts it, again, and Michele starts to say, “Woooo!” again but sort of stops herself. If you haven’t seen the movie, you might not understand what I mean, but that whole “Woooo!” thing sums up my road-trip experience quite neatly. In two weeks of driving, I had perhaps three or four moments when I could actually enjoy the freedom of the open road. The rest of the time I spent doing one of the following things – 1) looking for places to get gas, places to go to the bathroom, places to buy bottled water, places to park so that I could lift the hood and lean inside the car and yell, “Not!” at the oil tank before burning my hand trying to wrench the cap off, places to grab a Highway Authority employee by the shoulders and yell, “How in the hell do I get back to US 1?”, and places to sleep for the night; 2) reading the map and driving at the same time; 3) spilling various beverages, both hot and cold, on myself and on the car upholstery; 4) rummaging around in the back seat for a tape and driving at the same time; 5) talking to myself; 6) talking to other people (this generally took the form of inquiring at the top of my lungs as to whether Ray Charles had given them a good deal on those driving lessons); 7) liberating crumbs from my cleavage; 8) getting lost; 9) crafting origami asteroids out of the map instead of folding it correctly; and 10) crying and driving at the same time.

Many of my little miseries stemmed from the fact that I took the road trip by myself. I sometimes felt lonely, and I frequently felt bored (playing the license plate game with yourself gets old in about three minutes), but most of all I felt hassled. When you travel alone, you don’t have that handy division-of-labor thing; you can’t go to the bathroom while someone else fills the tank and stocks up on snacks. You go to the bathroom. Then you fill the tank. Then you stock up on snacks. You can’t drive while the passenger in the passenger seat looks at the map. You drive with one eye on the road, and with the other eye you look at the map. You have to sprout a third eye to watch for cops, too, because you don’t have anyone in the car to watch for you. You have to eat the fries yourself instead of having someone deliver the fries in bunches of three or four to your mouth, and you get salt all over the steering wheel. And if you get sick of driving, you have nobody to spell you. At one point on my trip, during the cannonball run going back home when my radio broke and I didn’t see another human being for twelve hours, I came out of a rest stop and asked myself, “Want me to drive for awhile?” and I answered myself, “Sure,” which leads me to my next point – you have nobody to talk to. I thought I didn’t mind this very much, but when I found myself bounding out of the car at Gulf stations and trilling, “Peeeeeeople! People who need . . . PEOPLE!”, I realized that perhaps I should have brought a friend along.

But having nobody to talk to means having nobody to answer to, and that has things to recommend it. I chose the music. I decided when to stop. I didn’t have to wait to go to the bathroom, and I didn’t have to pull over because someone else had to go to the bathroom. I could come and go as I pleased, not waiting for anyone to pack, not hurrying to finish packing. I never had to get a quorum on where to eat breakfast or what sights to see. I had a quorum: myself. But travelling by car with other people means gathering differently synchronized bladders, disparate musical tastes, and varying carsickness thresholds in one automobile and hoping that at least one person knows how to change a tire. It means nodding politely while The Passenger Who Knows About Shortcuts points to a line the width of a capillary on the map and says, “Now, if we’d gone that way like I told you, we’d have gotten there by now.” It means picking the pockets of The Sleeping Guy on the approach to the tollbooth. It means that The Person Who Feels Left Out In The Back Seat yells over the din from the open windows, “Whaa-a-a-aat? I can’t hear anything back here IN SIBERIA,” as if everyone else in the car had conspired to stick her back there so that they could talk about her, which they had no intention of doing, at least not until she started acting so weird about sitting in the back seat. It means that The Snacker – who seems to believe that calories consumed on the road don’t count because the little bastards “can’t find” her – chows every brand of portable food offered in the Sunoco Mart while everyone else chain-smokes in a vain effort to banish the cloud of Pringle breath from the car. It means a litany of commentary from The Living Safety Pamphlet, who kicks off the trip by primly reminding everyone that seat-belts save lives, then criticizes the driver for sipping coffee with the car in motion, wonders aloud if the driver has checked the fluid levels lately, cautions the driver against driving with less than half a tank of gas, tells the driver repeatedly to mind the speed limit, and mutters “don’t look now but I think I see a cop” every time a white car of any size enters her field of vision. It means not going more than twenty miles at a time before someone has to pee, or puke, or satisfy a craving, or declare a mandatory Chinese fire drill because a cigarette butt fell down between the seats. Noogie fights to determine who gets shotgun, thinly veiled accusations regarding the climate control, barely averted catastrophes when Jersey drivers pump their own gas – all elements of the open-road experience that we tend to forget.

Why doesn’t (“ah”) the open road live up to its press? Well, on the one hand, we have the archetype of Jack Kerouac, pointing his fintailed car across the country, and on the other hand we have the reality of families of five, cooling their heels in minivans on the entrance ramp to the Garden State Parkway while Mom hands out the Capri Suns. In spite of its brand name, let’s face it: the Ford Windstar does not exactly have “Born To Be Wild” written all over it. And, although I suspect that people unconsciously believe that they can, you can’t outrun bodily functions. No matter how cool the car, no matter how dark the glasses, no matter how Beat the Generation, if Neal Cassady had had an Erma Bombeck moment and piped up that he needed to tinkle, On The Road would have wound up on the remainder table faster than you can say “squaresville, Daddy-o.” You can’t outrun human behavior either, and if you thought of taking a shortcut on I-90, you can bet everyone else did too. None of the irksome realities of car travel – the traffic, the road rage, the sheer gall of fast-food pricing on the interstate – plays a role in American daydreams of hitting the road. I certainly didn’t think of any of those things, or of the possibility that, in a country so vast, I would go for long periods of time without seeing a blessed thing. But if I got up early enough, before it got too hot, before everyone else headed to work or school or church, I could almost see what the car commercials want to sell us on. I live in New York City, so I don’t have (or ordinarily need) a car. But I miss having a car. I don’t particularly miss driving for its own sake, but I do miss that knowledge that I could walk out my front door, start the car, and end up hundreds of miles away in a few hours if I so chose. In this country, we equate cars with destiny fulfilled. If you have a car, you can have an adventure. If you have a car, you can carry out a mission. If you have a car, anything can happen to you, and vice versa. Cars equal possibilities. We all tend to forget flat tires and battles for control of the “seek” button when we read Kerouac or Thompson or Least Heat Moon. At least, I do. I read these books and I want to get behind the wheel and go someplace – anyplace – a place where nobody needs a bladder and travelers can buy fresh fruit at rest stops. Mostly, though, I just want to go.

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